On 9/9/19 3:14 AM, Sam Kuper wrote:
> On 29 Apr 2013, Richard James Salts <d...@spectralmud.org> wrote[0]:
>> [..] pcretest was a handy utility. It would be good if the program
>> could instead be included with the pcregrep package in pcre-utils
>> package or the like.
> On 31 Jul 2012, Gedalya <geda...@gedalya.net> wrote:
>> As per #616660, pcretest is no longer distributed in any package. [..]
>> I'd like to have it available. [..] if this takes a -tools package
>> then I'm in favor of that. [..]
> On 5 Jul 2013, Neale Banks <ne...@lowendale.com.au> wrote:
>> [..] Please package pcretest, either in its own binary or in a package
>> like prce-utils. [..]
> I agree that `pcretest`, or something very much like it, is useful to
> have in Debian.
>
> At time of writing, `pcretest` itself is still unavailable in Debian, at
> least within Debian 9 ("Stretch"), which is currently the oldstable
> branch.
>
> However, `pcre2test`, *is* available, via the `pcre2-utils` package.
> pcre2test is an updated version of `pcretest` by the same author as
> pcretest: Phillip Hazel. IMO, this obviates the need for `pcretest`.
>
>
> Please could you comment on whether `pcre2test` meets your needs, such
> that Debian Developers[1] need not expend effort packaging `pcretest`?
>
It's worth noting that pcre2test doesn't use the same library and is not
guaranteed to behave the same way as the old pcre.
Packages still using the old pcre (source package pcre3) far outnumber the ones
already using the new pcre2. Apart from php7.3 which is already on pcre2, some
very widely used packages still on the old pcre include exim4, nginx, mariadb,
apache2.
Having said that, it's plausible that pcre2test will be good enough in practice
and behave equivalently to old pcre in most cases.
